The Buzz: Early bird or night owl?

Several gene variations were analyzed to determine whether they are linked with being either an early bird or a night owl.

A research team led by David Hinds of California-based biotechnology company 23andMe trawled the genomes – the unique genetic blueprint of an organism – of 89,283 people for clues. After filling two online surveys to determine their preferences, 75.5 percent of the participants were split in two categories: the morning persons and the night owls.

Circadian rhythm is a biological process, consisting of roughly 24-hour cycle.

The genome-wide association study examined 15 locations in DNA that are associated with having what the researchers termed “morningness”, otherwise known as being a “morning person”.

But one more thing was noticed by researchers that some of them genes were near to the genes that play a role in circadian rhythms. Nonetheless, those who presented the morning DNA features were women or adults over 60. These precious findings, published in Nature Communications, mean that there might actually be a genetic basis for certain people’s tendency to wake up at the crack of dawn – or to stay in bed past noon. Also, identifying the genes that are associated with these preferences could also help scientists understand the basic biology that underlies what humans think of themselves.

Yet, the majority of people in the study identified as night owls, survey data revealed. Those people who rise up early in the morning are less likely to have insomnia and less likely to suffer depression compared to those who reported being night person. A separate study also suggests that night owls are more prone to developing diabetes. Although in previous decades, late sleepers would often just be considered lazy and “improper”, people could not have been more wrong than that.

The analysis identified other traits associated with sleep preferences such as female gender, increasing age, body mass index, insomnia, sleep walking and depression.

“We’ve investigated genetics of more than 1,000 different traits like this and among the sleep behaviours we looked at, [morningness] stood out as having the most interesting genetics”, Hinds said.